Unconditional Surrender

by Evelyn Waugh

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

By 1941, after serving in North Africa and Crete, Guy Crouchback has lost his Halberdier idealism. A desk job in London gives him the chance of reconciliation with his former wife. Then, in Yugoslavia, as a liaison officer with the partisans, Crouch becomes finally and fully aware of the futility of a war he once saw in terms of honor.

Unconditional Surrender is the third novel in Waugh's brilliant Sword of Honor trilogy recording the tumultuous wartime adventures of Guy Crouchback ("the finest work of fiction in English to emerge from World War II" -Atlantic Monthly), which also comprises Men at Arms and Officers and Gentlemen.

Release date: December 11, 2012

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 336

Sample

When Guy Crouchback returned to his regiment in the autumn of 1941 his position was in many ways anomalous. He had been trained in the first batch of temporary officers, had commanded a company, had been detached for special duties, had been in action and acquitted himself with credit; he had twice put up captain’s stars and twice removed them; their scars were plainly visible on his shoulder straps. He had been invalided home on an order direct from GHQ ME and the medical authorities could find nothing wrong with him. There were rumors that he had “blotted his copybook” in West Africa. When he was commissioned in 1939 his comparative old age had earned him the sobriquet of “uncle.” Now he was two years older and the second batch of officers in training were younger than those who had joined with him. To them he seemed a patriarch; to him they seemed a generation divided by an impassable barrier. Once he had made the transition, had thrown himself into the mêlée on the ante-room floor, had said “cheerioh” when he drank with them, and had been accepted as one of themselves. He could not do it a second time. Nor were there any longer mêlées and guest nights, nor much drinking. The new young officers were conscripts who liked to spend their leisure listening to jazz on the wireless. The first battalion, his battalion, followed Ritchie-Hook biffing across the sands of North Africa. A draft of reinforcements were sent out to them. Guy was not posted with them. Hookforce, all save four, had been taken prisoner in Crete. He had no comrades in arms in England except Tommy Blackhouse who returned to raise another Special Service Force. They met Tommy in Bellamy’s and he offered him a post on his staff, but the shadow of Ivor Claire lay dark and long over Commandos, and Guy answered that he was content to soldier on with the Halberdiers.

This he did for two blank years. A Second Brigade was formed, and Guy followed its fortunes in training, with periodic changes of quarters from Penkirk in Scotland to Brook Park in Cornwall. Home Forces no longer experienced the shocks, counter-orders, and disorders of the first two years of war. The army in the Far East now suffered as they had done. In Europe the initiative was now with the allies. They were laboriously assembled and equipped and trained. Guy rose to be second-in-command of his battalion with the acting rank of major.

Then in August 1943 there fell on him the blow that had crushed Jumbo at Mugg: “I’m sorry, uncle, but I’m afraid we shan’t be taking you with us when we go to foreign parts. You’ve been invaluable in training. Don’t know what I should have done without you. But I can’t risk taking a chap of your age into action.”

“Am I much older than you, colonel?”

“Not much, I suppose, but I’ve spent my life in this job. I get hit, the second-in-command will have to take over. Can’t risk it.”

“I’d gladly come down in rank. Couldn’t I have a company? Or a platoon?”

“Be your age, uncle. No can do. This is an order from brigade.”

The new brigadier, lately arrived from the Eighth Army, was the man to whom, briefly, Guy had been attached in West Africa when he encompassed the death of Apthorpe. On that occasion the brigadier had said: “I don’t want to see you again ever.” He had fought long and hard since then and won a DSO, but throughout the dust of war he remembered Guy. Apthorpe, that brother-uncle, that ghost, laid, Guy had thought, on the island of Mugg, walked still in his porpoise boots to haunt him; the defeated lord of the thunder-box still worked his jungle magic. When a Halberdier said: “No can do,” it was final.

“We shall need you for the embarkation, of course. When you’ve seen us off, take a spot of leave. After that you’re old enough to find yourself something to do. There’s always ‘barrack duties,’ of course, or you might report to the War House to the pool of unemployed officers. There’s plenty of jobs going begging for chaps in your position.”

Guy took his leave and was at Matchet when Italy surrendered. News of the king’s flight came on the day the brigade landed at Salerno. It brought Guy some momentary exhilaration.

“That looks like the end of the Piedmontese usurpation,” he said to his father. “What a mistake the Lateran Treaty was. It seemed masterly at the time—how long? Fifteen years ago? What are fifteen years in the history of Rome? How much better it would have been if the Popes had sat it out and then emerged saying: ‘What was all that? Risorgimento? Garibaldi? Cavour? the House of Savoy? Mussolini? Just some hooligans from out of town causing a disturbance. Come to think of it wasn’t there once a poor little boy whom they called King of Rome?’ That’s what the Pope ought to be saying today.”

Mr. Crouchback regarded his son sadly. “My dear boy,” he said, “you’re really talking the most terrible nonsense, you know. That isn’t at all what the Church is like. It isn’t what she’s for.”

They were walking along the cliffs returning at dusk to the Marine Hotel with Mr. Crouchback’s retriever, ageing now, not gamboling as he used but loping behind them. Mr. Crouchback had aged too, and for the first time showed concern with his own health. They fell silent, Guy disconcerted by his father’s rebuke, Mr. Crouchback still, it seemed, pondering the question he had raised; for when at length he spoke it was to say: “Of course it’s reasonable for a soldier to rejoice in victory.”

“I don’t think I’m interested in victory now,” said Guy.

“Then you’ve no business to be a soldier.”

“Oh, I want to stay in the war. I should like to do some fighting. But it doesn’t seem to matter now who wins. When we declared war on Finland…”

He left the sentence unfinished, and his father said: “That sort of question isn’t for soldiers.”

As they came into sight of the hotel, he added: “I suppose I’m getting like a schoolmaster. Forgive me. We mustn’t quarrel. I used often to get angry with poor Ivo; and with Angela. She was rather a tiresome girl the year she came out. But I don’t think I’ve ever been angry with you.”

Matchet had changed in the last two years. The army unit for whom Monte Rosa had been cleared, had gone as quickly as they came, leaving the boarding-house empty. Its blank windows and carpetless floors stood as a symbol of the little town’s brief popularity. Refugees from bombing returned to their former homes. Mrs. Tickeridge moved to be near a school for Jennifer. The days when the Cuthberts could “let every room twice over” were ended and they reluctantly found themselves obliged to be agreeable. It was not literally true, as Miss Vavasour claimed, that they “went down on their knees” to keep their residents, but they did offer Mr. Crouchback his former sitting room at its former price.

“No, thank you very much,” he had said. “You’ll remember I promised to take it again after the war, and unless things change very much for the worse I shall do that. Meanwhile my few sticks are in store and I don’t feel like getting them out again.”

“Oh, we will furnish it for you, Mr. Crouchback.”

“It wouldn’t be quite the same. You make me very comfortable as I am.”

His former rent was now being paid as a weekly allowance to an unfrocked priest.

The Cuthberts were glad enough to accommodate parents visiting their sons at Our Lady of Victories and obscurely supposed that if they antagonized Mr. Crouchback, he would somehow stop their coming.

*

Guy left next day and reported to the Halberdier barracks. He had little appetite for leave now.

Three days later a letter came from his father:

Marine Hotel

Matchet

20 September 1943

My Dear Guy,

I haven’t been happy about our conversation on your last evening. I said too much or too little. Now I must say more.

Of course in the 1870s and 80s every decent Roman disliked the Piedmontese, just as the decent French now hate the Germans. They had been invaded. And, of course, most of the Romans we know kept it up, sulking. But that isn’t the Church. The Mystical Body doesn’t strike attitudes and stand on its dignity. It accepts suffering and injustice. It is ready to forgive at the first hint of compunction.

When you spoke of the Lateran Treaty did you consider how many souls may have been reconciled and have died at peace as the result of it? How many children may have been brought up in the faith who might have lived in ignorance? Quantitative judgments don’t apply. If only one soul was saved that is full compensation for any amount of loss of “face.”

I write like this because I am worried about you and I gather I may not live very much longer. I saw the doctor yesterday and he seemed to think I have something pretty bad the matter.

As I say, I’m worried about you. You seemed so much enlivened when you first joined the army. I know you are cut up at being left behind in England. But you mustn’t sulk.

It was not a good thing living alone and abroad. Have you thought at all about what you will do after the war? There’s the house at Broome the village calls “Little Hall”—quite incorrectly. All the records refer to it simply as the “Lesser House.” You’ll have to live somewhere and I doubt if you’ll want to go back to the Castello even if it survives, which doesn’t seem likely the way they are bombing everything in Italy.

You see I am thinking a lot about death at the moment. Well that’s quite suitable at my age and condition.

Ever your affec. father,

G. Crouchback

When Hookforce sailed without him, Jumbo Trotter abandoned all hope of active service. He became commandant of No. 6 Transit Camp, London District, a post which required good nature, sobriety, and little else except friends of influence—in all of which qualities Jumbo was rich. He no longer bore resentment against Ben Ritchie-Hook. He accepted the fact that he was on the shelf. The threat of just such a surrender of his own condition overcast Guy.

Jumbo often took a drive to the Halberdier barracks to see what was on. There in late September he found Guy disconsolately installed as PAD officer and assistant adjutant.

“Put in to see the Captain Commandant,” he advised. “Say there is something coming through for you any day but you have to be in London. Get posted to the ‘unemployed pool’ and come and stay at my little place. I can make you quite comfortable.”

So Guy moved to Jumbo’s little place—Little Hall? Lesser House?—No. 6 Transit Camp, London District, and for a few days looked into the depths of the military underworld. There was a waiting-room in an outlying dependency of the War Office where daily congregated officers of all ages whose regiments and corps had no use for them.

There had been a “Man-power Directive” from the highest source which enjoined that everyone in the country should be immediately employed in the “war effort.” Guy was interviewed by a legless major who said: “You seem to have done all right. I don’t know why they’ve sent you to this outfit. First Halberdier I’ve had through my hands. What have you been up to?”

He studied the file in which was recorded all Guy’s official biography of the last four years.

“Age,” said Guy.

“Thirty-nine, just rising forty. Yes, that’s old for your rank. You’re back to captain now of course. Well all I can offer at the moment is a security job at Aden and almoner at a civilian hospital. I don’t suppose either particularly appeals to you?”

“No.”

“Well, stick around. I may find something better. But they don’t look for good fellows in my office. Look about outside and see what you can find.”

And, sure enough, one evening early in October, after his third attendance on the legless major (who offered him, with undisguised irony, an administrative post in Wales at a school of air photography interpretation) he met Tommy Blackhouse once more in Bellamy’s. Tommy now had a brigade of Commandos. He was under orders to sail shortly for Italy to rehearse the Anzio landings and was keeping dead quiet about his movements. He only said, “Wish you’d decided to come to me, Guy.”

“Too late now?”

“Far too late.”

Guy explained his predicament.

“That’s the hell of a mess.”

“The fellow at the War Office has been very civil.”

“Yes, but you’ll find he’ll get impatient soon. There’s a flap about man-power. They’ll suddenly pitch you into something awful. Wish I could help.”

Later that evening he said: “I’ve thought of something that might do as a stop-gap. I keep a liaison officer at HOO HQ. God knows what he does. Anyway I’m taking him away somewhere else. There are a few odd bodies that have got attached to me. They came under HOO. You could liaise with them for a bit if you liked.”

When Jumbo heard of it, he said: “Strictly speaking I suppose you aren’t ‘in transit’ anymore.”

“I hope I am.”

“Well, anyway, stay on here as long as you like. We’ll find a way of covering you in the returns. London District is never much trouble. All stock-brokers and wine merchants from the Foot Guards. Awfully easy fellows to deal with.”

But it was not for this that he had dedicated himself on the sword of Roger of Waybroke that hopeful morning four years back.

In all the hosts of effigies that throng the aisles of Westminster Abbey one man only, and he a sailor, strikes a martial attitude. The men of the middle ages have sheathed their swords and composed their hands in prayer; the men of the age of reason have donned the toga. A Captain Montagu alone, in Flaxman’s posthumous statue, firmly grips his hilt, and, because they had so many greater treasures to protect, the chapter left him to stand there throughout the war unencumbered by sand bags, gazing across the lower nave as he had gazed at the ships of revolutionary France in the waters of Ushant on the day of victory and death.

His name is not well remembered and his portrait, larger than life and portly for his years, has seldom attracted the notice of sightseers. It was not his sword but another which on Friday, 29 October 1943, drew the column of fours which slowly shuffled forward from Millbank, up Great College Street, under a scarred brick wall, on which during the hours of darkness in the preceding spring a zealous, arthritic communist had emblazoned the words, SECOND FRONT NOW, until they reached the door under the blasted and bombed west window. The people of England were long habituated to queues; some had joined the procession ignorant of its end—hoping perhaps for cigarettes or shoes—but most were in a mood of devotion. In the street a few words were exchanged; no laughter.

The day was overcast, damp, misty, and still. Winter overcoats had not yet appeared. Each member of the crowd carried a respirator—valueless now, the experts secretly admitted, against any gas the enemy was likely to employ, but still the badge of a people in arms. Women predominated; here and there a service man—British, American, Polish, Dutch, French—displayed some pride of appearance; the civilians were shabby and grubby. Some, for it was their lunch hour, munched “Woolton Pies”; others sucked cigarettes made of the sweepings of canteen floors. Bombing had ceased for the time being but the livery of air-raid shelter remained the national dress. As they reached the Abbey church, which many were entering for the first time in their lives, all fell quite silent as though they were approaching a corpse lying in state.

The sword they had come to see stood upright between two candles, on a table counterfeiting an altar. Policemen guarded it on either side. It had been made at the King’s command as a gift to “the steel-hearted people of Stalingrad.” An octogenarian, who had made ceremonial swords for five sovereigns, rose from his bed to forge it; silver, gold, rock-crystal, and enamel had gone to its embellishment. In this year of the Sten gun it was a notable weapon and was first exhibited as a feat of craftsmanship at Goldsmith’s Hall and at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Some few took comfort at this evidence that ancient skills survived behind the shoddy improvisation of the present. It was not thus that it affected the hearts of the people. Every day the wireless announced great Russian victories while the British advance in Italy was coming to a halt. The people were suffused with gratitude to their remote allies and they venerated the sword as the symbol of their own generous and spontaneous emotion.

The newspapers and the Ministry of Information caught on. The Times “dropped into poetry.”

… I saw the Sword of Stalingrad,

Then bow’d down my head from the Light of it,

Spirit to my spirit, the Might of it

Silently whispered—O Mortal, Behold…

I am the Life of Stalingrad,

You and its people shall unite in me,

Men yet unborn, in the great Light in me

Triumphs shall sing when my Story is told.

The gossip-writer of the Daily Express suggested it should be sent round the kingdom. Cardiff, Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, Glasgow, and Edinburgh paid it secular honors in their Art Galleries and Guild Halls. Now, back from its tour, it reached its apotheosis, exposed for adoration hard by the shrine of St. Edward the Confessor and the sacring place of the kings of England.

Guy Crouchback drove past the line of devotees on his way to luncheon. Unmoved by the popular enthusiasm for the triumphs of “Joe” Stalin, who now qualified for the name of “uncle,” as Guy had done and Apthorpe, he was not tempted to join them in their piety. 29 October 1943 had another and more somber significance for him. It was his fortieth birthday and to celebrate the occasion he had asked Jumbo Trotter to luncheon.

It was through Jumbo’s offices that he now sat at ease behind a FANNY driver instead of traveling by bus. After four years of war Jumbo preserved his immunity to sumptuary regulations. As also did Ruben. In a famine-stricken world the little fish-restaurant dispensed in their seasons Colchester oysters, Scotch salmon, lobsters, prawns, gulls’ eggs, which rare foods were specifically exempt from the law which limited the price of hotel meals to five shillings, and often caviar, obtained, only Ruben knew how, through diplomatic channels. Most surprising of all there sometimes appeared cheeses from France, collected by intrepid parachutists and conveyed home by submarine. There was an abundance of good wine, enormously costly, at a time when the cellars of the hotels were empty and wine merchants dealt out meager monthly parcels only to their oldest customers. Ruben had for some years enjoyed a small and appreciative clientèle. Once he had served in Bellamy’s and there were always tables for its members. There was also an increasing dilution of odd-looking men who called the proprietor “Mr. Ruben” and carried large quantities of bank-notes in their hip pockets. That restaurant was a rare candle in a dark and naughty world. Kerstie Kilbannock, who had made noxious experiments with custard powder and condiments, once asked: “Do tell me, Ruben, how do you make your mayonnaise?” and received the grave reply: “Quite simply, my lady, fresh eggs and olive oil.”

Guy led Jumbo to a corner table. He had spent little time in London since his return from Egypt and he could seldom afford to feast, but Ruben was loyal to old faces and familiar names.

“Rather a change from the Senior,” Jumbo remarked as he surveyed the company. “A great change,” he added as he read the menu. They consumed great quantities of oysters. As they rose surfeited from their table, it was seized by a couple who had just come in; Kerstie Kilbannock and an American soldier. As though playing musical chairs, she was in Jumbo’s warm place before he had taken his cap from the peg above him.

“Guy, how are you?”

“Forty.”

“We’ve been lunching with Ruby at the Dorchester and are so hungry we had to pop in here and fill up. You know the Lootenant?”

“Yes, indeed. How are you, Loot?”

Everyone knew Lieutenant Padfield; even Guy who knew so few people. He was a portent of the Grand Alliance. London was full of American soldiers, tall, slouching, friendly, woefully homesick young men who seemed always in search of somewhere to sit down. In the summer they had filled the parks and sat on the pavements round the once august mansions which had been assigned to them. For their comfort there swarmed out of the slums and across the bridges multitudes of drab, ill-favored adolescent girls and their aunts and mothers, never before seen in the squares of Mayfair and Belgravia. These they passionately and publicly embraced, in the blackout and at high noon, and rewarded with chewing-gum, razorblades, and other rare trade-goods from their PX stores. Lieutenant Padfield was a horse of a different color; not precisely, for his face, too, was the color of putty; he too slouched; he, too, was a sedentary by habit. But he was not at all homesick; when not in a chair he must have been in rapid motion, for he was ubiquitous. He was twenty-five years old and in England for the first time. He had been one in the advanced party of the American army and there was no corner of the still intricate social world where he was not familiar.

Guy first met him when on leave he went reluctantly to call on his uncle Peregrine. This was during the Loot’s first days in England.

“… Brought a letter from a fellow who used to come to Cowes. Wants to see my miniatures….”

Then during the same week Guy was asked to dinner at the House of Commons by his brother-in-law Arthur Box-Bender. “… Told we ought to do something about some of these Americans. They’re interested in the House, naturally. Do come along and give a hand….” There were six young American officers, the Loot among them.

Very soon he had ceased to be a mere member of the occupying forces to whom kindness should be shown. Two or three widows survived from the years of hospitality and still tried meagerly to entertain. The Lieutenant was at all their little parties. Two or three young married women were staking claims to replace them as hostesses. The Loot knew them all. He was in every picture gallery, every bookshop, every club, every hotel. He was also in every inaccessible castle in Scotland, at the sick bed of every veteran artist and politician, in the dressing-room of every leading actress and in every university common-room, and he expressed his thanks to his hosts and hostesses not with the products of the PX stores but with the publications of Sylvia Beach and sketches by Fuseli.

When Guy went to have his hair cut the Loot seemed always to be in the next chair. One of the few places where he was never seen was HOO HQ. He had no apparent military function. In the years of peace he h. . .